The Me in Team & Atlas Struggles

To those overwhelmed,

Growing up my sport was always baseball. I don’t know if it had to do with my older brother playing or the fact that my dad coached every season, but as soon as I could walk I was swinging a bat ( a foam bat at least). When I finally met the age requirement my dad signed me up for tee ball at our local ball park. To say that I was ecstatic is a huge understatement. I immediately had grand visions of home runs, golden gloves, and MVP’s (at the age of 5 I had already assumed that the MLB was a guarantee). There was only one problem: after the try outs I thought that the rest of the players on my team were terrible. I considered myself to be the fastest, the best hitter, the best thrower, the greatest that Pearland has ever seen (for those that know me all too well, you’re starting to see where some of my more prideful moments originated). 

Bottom line, I thought I was the greatest thing since mac and cheese and there was no way I was going to let my team get in my way of stardom.

I didn’t trust them, and because I didn’t trust my fellow teammates the most peculiar thing would happen when my team was on the field: I would do all of the work. Literally, every time the ball was hit whether it was coming near my mound or not, I would take off running scoop the ball up and instead of throw it to my teammate at first base I would run the ball there myself.  The funny thing is it worked. I even remember grabbing the ball and running to 3^rd base and then all the way back to 1^st base and getting both runners out.

My selfish strategy  of doing all of the work worked well for a while, but sooner or later the bases got further apart, the batters got better, the kids got faster, and my baseball career went down in fiery crash.

How many of you are finding it hard to do all of the work? How many of you feel like an Atlas-like burden is slowly crushing you? How many of you feel like no one can help, that a certain task is only yours to shoulder?

I see these burdens harm people far too often. Many times I have witnessed people “burn out,” cry themselves to sleep at night, or suffer anxiety attacks because they refuse to let go.  Many times we aren’t willing to let others help us out or aren’t willing to put power into the hands of other people. We’re afraid of what could happen. Kings did this. Leaders do this. Church ministers do this. 

If you’re beginning to feel like the sea is rising or the caves are closing in, maybe it’s time to stop programming for people and start letting people program.

Jesus tells us that we can do even greater things than he did (John 14:12), not because we have greater abilities or greater faith, but because we have greater numbers.

Open up.

Allow communities to be actual communities.

Sacrifice doing it all so that others can lead

Merely,

Chris Gerac        

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 12:24 NIV

Free Falling & Freedom

To those hungry,

I love cliff diving!

There is something freeing about throwing your body off a cliff into the unknown. Some call it idiotic I call it living. Some are paralyzed by fear looking over the edge; I’m liberated and released from the confines of my body. When I cliff dive its like taking my soul to a playground. There, somewhere in the few seconds between running and the splash, my soul is free to explore, to wander, to be joyful, and to climb to new wonders.

I have problems with people, especially Christians, who complain that they are always bored. To be honest I hate the word. To me boredom is an indicator that your life has gone sour.

 Two nights ago I went to my church’s college service where our college pastor spoke these following words, “There is a common lie in Christianity: God redeems us to bore us to death!” Amen to that. How often do we hear the excuse that Christianity is boring, or that it’s a bunch of        rules?

My response to those excuses, “Where is that even biblical?”

Where in Peter’s story of going from fisherman to fisher of man is there a trace of boredom? Where is the boredom in Saul being struck blind, then becoming one of the most evangelical Christians this world has or will ever see? Or better yet keeping with Paul, where was the boredom when he survived a shipwreck, snakebite, and watched a prison door suddenly unlocked itself? Where were the early Christian’s boredom when they watched as water was turned to wine, saw the blind see, and saw the dead rise. We pay for entertainment like this. We spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year on vacations, movies, theme parks, etc. We squander money and our time trying to kick start our hearts.

All the while God is offering us the opportunity to live a life worth telling.

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10

Jesus, the author of life, is looking to begin life not end it.

Jesus, the one who sacrificed himself for the sake of sinners, will take you on the ride of your life. He’ll take you to the pit of a lion on a snowy day like he did with Benaniah. He will invite you to heal, and be healed. He will call you away from a life of fishing and bring you into a life of adventure.

The question is…will we let him?

Merely,

Chris Gerac

“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” 1 John 5:13 NIV

Roasted Peanuts & Calloused Coldness

To those hardened

To those who don’t feel

To those whose hearts no longer flutter

To those who insist that they are living although their “lives” have flat lined

I am writing this on a plane destined to New York City, and it was less than 5 minutes from boarding that I became sick. No I am not suffering from motion sickness, nor from flight anxieties. I am sick from what my young eyes have seen. I am sick because I’ve seen the lowest of human society. I am sick because my soul withers in disgust at the stone hearts of those surrounding me that I now get the pleasure of enduring for a 3-hour flight.

I understand human nature, I honestly do, but I was not prepared to experience such callousness as I have just experienced. Perhaps though it would be best to account for what I have seen before pushing forward.

We (myself and my girlfriends family) had just boarded the plane when the flight attendant spoke over the intercom and informed us that this flight was booked solid. Travelling in a pack of 5 we were more than joyous to have secured a whole row and another 2 seats right in front so that we could all sit together as one family. In a matter of minutes, awkward apologies, crab-like scuttles, and the slamming of over packed carry on spaces soon filled the cabin. It wasn’t long before every seat (minus 2-3 randomly spaced ones) was filled and everyone was settling in for the next 180 minutes of his or her life. It was then that my eye glimpsed a small child cradled in the arms of a young mother who was standing at the front.  Once more the attendant’s voice boomed overhead, informing us that there was a women at the front with a young child and a baby who needed a whole row together, and if some people could rearrange their seats she would be eternally grateful.  

You would have thought it was a morgue by how still everyone became, by how deadly quiet the once lively cabin had become, by how heartless all of the passengers seemed to be.

 Not one person twitched a muscle. Not one passenger dared looking that young woman in the eyes. It was as if every warm body had suddenly gone as cold and ethereal as a ghost. The attendant came on again, and you could hear her anger in her voice as she asked once more for people to move… still nothing! Finally a couple of reluctant people slid out of their seats and moved but one seat was still needed to make certain that the mother could be next to her children. My heart was already breaking, but it completely shattered when the flight attendant marched past my row and I could see the petrified face of the young child that clung to her back as she was forced to then be seated over 15 rows behind her mother, all because no one cared enough to move.

If life were like the Discovery Channel, that momma bear would have been tearing right up and down these aisles. Everyone knows that you don’t come between a mother and her child, but apparently in the 21^st century, where suits and java chillers rule, we have forgotten this age old adage… or more frightening, maybe we don’t care.

I could quote numerous Bible verses to support how sad and immoral that is, but I believe that it would be unnecessary.

I don’t care what your religion, or beliefs are, you know deep down what is right and what is wrong. The Nazi’s at Nuremberg were held to this standard and so should we be.

What has gone so wrong that we know longer know what wrong is?

When did we allow ourselves to become so hardened?

When did we forfeit the right to live?

When did we subject ourselves to lives devoid of emotions or feelings?

When did we grow cold?

There is a common misconception with Christianity…

Satan doesn’t win when we sin; there are enough scars to forgive us for that. Satan wins when we have become so calloused that we can no longer feel or care when we do sin.

Merely,

Chris Gerac

“You never come between a mother and her children.” – common sense